Rational Creatures: Every Past Affliction

In 2018, I had the honour of participating in Christina Boyd’s Rational Creatures anthology. This was a collection of stories by sixteen Austenesque authors, each focusing on a different female character in Jane Austen’s universe. The stories were each told in a manner true to the characters and Austen’s style, while still providing a rich sampling of the author’s own voices. It truly is an impressive collection!

It was my particular delight to accompany Marianne Dashwood on her journey of maturity and true love. We chatted a little about Marianne over at From Pemberley to Milton, and I hope you will stop by to learn a little about her story.

My thanks to Christina Boyd for inviting me to participate in this project!

“But I hate to hear you talking so, like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.” —PersuasionJane Austen: True romantic or rational creature? Her novels transport us back to the Regency, a time when well-mannered gentlemen and finely-bred ladies fell in love as they danced at balls and rode in carriages. Yet her heroines, such as Elizabeth Bennet, Anne Elliot, and Elinor Dashwood, were no swooning, fainthearted damsels in distress. Austen’s novels have become timeless classics because of their biting wit, honest social commentary, and because she wrote of strong women who were ahead of their day. True to their principles and beliefs, they fought through hypocrisy and broke social boundaries to find their happily-ever-after.

In the third romance anthology of The Quill Collective series, sixteen celebrated Austenesque authors write the untold histories of Austen’s brave adventuresses, her shy maidens, her talkative spinsters, and her naughty matrons. Peek around the curtain and discover what made Lady Susan so wicked, Mary Crawford so capricious, and Hettie Bates so in need of Emma Woodhouse’s pity.

Rational Creatures is a collection of humorous, poignant, and engaging short stories set in Georgian England that complement and pay homage to Austen’s great works and great ladies who were, perhaps, the first feminists in an era that was not quite ready for feminism.

“Make women rational creatures, and free citizens, and they will become good wives; —that is, if men do not neglect the duties of husbands and fathers.” —Mary Wollstonecraft